Death Magnetic was the band’s first album to be produced by Rick Rubin, making this their first album since 1991’s Metallica (Usually known as The Black Album) not to be produced by Bob Rock. The album received mostly positive reviews upon release, with critics describing it as a return to the musical style of their early albums. Death Magnetic is the band’s first album to feature bassist Robert Trujillo.

Call Death Magnetic Kirk Hammett’s revenge. Famously browbeaten into accepting Lars Ulrich and producers Bob Rock’s dictum that guitar solos were “dated” and thereby verboten for 2003’s St. Anger – a fraught recording chronicled on the 2004 documentary Some Kind of Monster – Metallica’s lead guitarist dominates this 2008 sequel, playing with an euphoric fury not heard in years, if not decades. This aesthetic shift isn’t because Hammett suddenly rules the band: powerless to add solos to St. Anger, he couldn’t reinstate them without the blessing of Ulrich and James Hetfield, the politburo of Metallica. The duo suffered some combination of shame and humility in the wake of the muddled St. Anger and Monster, convincing these two unmovable forces to change direction. They ditched longtime producer Rock – who’d helmed every album since 1991’s breakthrough blockbuster Metallica – in favor of Rick Rubin, patron saint of all veteran rockers looking to reconnect with their early spark. Rubin may be the go-to producer for wayward superstars but as the producer of Slayer, he’s also rooted in thrash, so he understands the core of Metallica’s greatness and gently steers them back to basics on Death Magnetic.

Tracklist:
01 – That Was Just Your Life
02 – The End Of The Line
03 – Broken, Beat & Scarred
04 – The Day That Never Comes
05 – All Nightmare Long
06 – Cyanide
07 – The Unforgiven III
08 – The Judas Kiss
09 – Suicide & Redemption (Instrumental)
10 – My Apocalypse